Familiarity breeds content

Hornets boss Dom Di Paola has declared himself happy with the familiarity of the new league set-up for 2018/19 and shared his hopes for the new season with programme editor Mark Wells.

“It’s useful to know that we’re not going to jump into another league, for sure, as it means we now know what sort of players we need to bring in. We would have had to have had a rethink if we were going further west, for example, simply because of where players are based. You’re not going to want to bring in a lad from, say, Eastbourne when half of your matches are going to be played in London, or Hertfordshire or wherever, as that’s impractical.

We also know this league now and what to expect. There’s also going to be fewer games, so less travelling, and personally I don’t think it looks too bad. It’s nice to know that we’re not going to have to battle the rush hour traffic for a Tuesday night match up near London and although we’ve gained a couple more Kent clubs, I don’t mind that as the journey is relatively easy. We’ve lost Lewes of course but gained two Sussex sides in Haywards Heath and Three Bridges but otherwise its not too different from last season. We could still get shunted across next summer when we’re back in Horsham as we’ll be on the boundary, a bit like South Park, but we’ll deal with that if it happens.

You don’t really know how other clubs are going to recruit over the summer, and there’s usually one or two clubs who throw money at it, but you’ll have an idea of who might be strong again. With the Kent sides in it it’s likely to be pretty physical but, on the flip side, some of the pacey London teams have gone that we struggled against so there’s pros and cons.

What would have concerned me, had we been moved now, is that fear of the unknown in a different league. 2018/19 will be our third full season at this level and I think we’ve got to grips with it now. Okay, we’ve not been ripping up any trees but I do think we underachieved last season and will be looking for us to continue to improve next season”.